With a five-year-old Evolution 371 its newest press, Swiss printer Ringier was sharing its ‘where next’ deliberations with fellow Wifag users.
Host of the user group meeting, Ringier Print Adligenswil, based near Lucerne, is one of the biggest newspaper print centres Switzerland. In addition to daily newspapers such as Blick and Neue Luzerner Zeitung, it prints newsletters for Migros and Coop plus trade, party, church and special interest titles.
Users from Germany, Slovakia and Switzerland were told of technical opportunities for newspaper production that might arise from Wifag’s reorganisation. Digital printing, coating and laminating have recently been merged with web-fed press production.
Traditional and digital solutions should be devised in collaboration with customers, chief executive Jörgen Karlsson says.
Among those consulting the crystal ball were Zipcon chief Bernd Zipper, who believes inkjet print will help justify printed newspapers, despite increasing online media. “The trend towards personalisation and individualisation continues, enabling customers to put together their own newspapers and tailor them to their personal preferences,” he says.
“More business news or a more detailed look at sports are just some of the many possibilities. Visually-impaired people can set their newspaper to large-print mode, rendering the cumbersome task of using a magnifying glass unnecessary.”
Zipper urged people to change their thinking and to take advantage of digital printing technology to come up with new ideas for making newspapers more attractive.
On the technical side, Wifag’s Pascal Clemencon showed results from trials of gloss coatings of newspapers, using an anilox roller. With the raw structure of newsprint, making coatings flow into ‘valleys’ – so that benefits effectively disappear from a viewing angle of 60° – the process will not produce high-quality gloss, and “at most, helps with abrasion resistance”.
However, inkjet coating – including spot coating – produces better results: Digital project manager Carsten Salomo says print modules already supplied to varnishing machine specialist Steinemann could be integrated into newspaper web presses, providing an additional option of personalised content.
Next year the user meeting will be held in Fribourg, where Wifag will be able to demonstrate its digital printing technologies.